The world of the Bible is not the world we live in.

It’s sometimes tricky to understand what the Bible might mean to us nowadays, when everything is so different. The conflict between the ancient and the modern crops up very often in discourse with unbelievers. Christians need to take this conflict seriously.

Clearly, the authors of the Bible lived in very different times, and the stories in the Bible reflect that. More than anything else, science and technology have changed our planet so much that a person from the time of Jesus would be aghast with wonder, and most likely fear, if we could somehow travel through time and show her our lives.

Imagine the shepherds who came to see the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem. What would they make of an aeroplane? Perhaps they would think it was magic! Or a miracle! Or maybe they would think it was a monster! And of course, how could it possibly fly?

And yet we know how it can fly. It can fly because of the angle of the wings and the thrust from its jet engines. We managed to build planes by having good ideas, then testing them to see if they worked in real life. If they didn’t, they were noted and put aside, and other ideas were tried. Eventually we cracked it. Now I can get from Australia to Europe in a day!

And that’s how science works. We have ideas and figure out how we could test them: then we do it!

This way, science gets better ideas over time and our picture of the world becomes more accurate. Bad ideas should get weeded out or improved eventually.

What has that got to do with the Bible? The authors of the Bible had their ideas about science, too. Sometimes they were good ideas: they knew a lot of clever stuff about farming already. But there were lots of ideas humans didn’t have until later, and these things, of course, aren’t mentioned in the Bible.

For example, the authors of the Bible has no idea that the sun was just another, fairly typical star. They didn’t know about the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy or the billions of other galaxies. They didn’t know about the germs that make us ill, or the tectonic plates that shift and cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Because of the age of the Bible, many statements in the Bible don’t seem fit the scientific picture of the real world if we take them at face value.

Of course, Christians want everyone to think the Bible is true! If the real world contradicts the Bible, Christians have a problem. I’ve found they often try two things: twisting the Word or twisting the world.

Twisting the Word

This is what many moderate Christians attempt. They use words like ‘context’ and ‘interpretation’ a lot. They tell us the six-day creation story is a metaphor for the various different stages of our planet’s development. They argue it’s ok for the Bible to call a bat a bird because people didn’t know better then. More seriously, they tie themselves in terrible knots trying to explain what Jesus meant when he said:

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

But of course, so far, no mountains have been moved by faith. And does that really say, ‘nothing shall be impossible unto you’? Can Christians really do anything? Not in the real world.

There are many more examples of this kind of rationalisation. I merely flag them here, because in future posts, we will doubtless encounter this kind of twisting again. For now, I want to make one thing very clear:

The words ‘context’ and ‘interpretation’ are not magic words to make the Bible fit the real world. If the Bible flat-out contradicts reality, no amount of context or interpretation will change that. Here’s some context: this book is supposed to be the perfect Word of the creator of the universe, right?

Twisting the World

Fundamentalist Christians refuse to re-interpret the Bible when the real world contradicts it. When the Bible seems to be wrong, they prefer to twist reality to fit the Bible, as poor Galileo found out when he discovered the earth goes round the sun. The Catholic Church disagreed, and poor Galileo was forced to recant his solid science.

The most famous examples today concern the age of the universe, and our evolutionary origins. Science has conclusively shown the universe to be much older than the biblical account seems to suggest. Instead of looking afresh at the text, ‘fundie’ Christians choose to attack the scientific standpoint.

But remember how science works? Bad ideas get filtered out anyway. Of course we do not know all the answers yet, and our current ideas will certainly be improved. but some theories are by now so well supported by the evidence that they are unlikely to be significantly changed. Mainstream science is not at the beck and call of biblical literalists!

Again, this blog will sadly soon feature many more examples of this kind of Christian fraud, so for now I will make one further general warning:

Scientists are the people to trust on matters of science. When a literalist preacher contradicts science, he clearly has an interest in making the science fit the bible. Check the claims carefully; they are usually utter rubbish.

2 Responses to “The World or the Word?”

  1. 9:00, 5 September, 2008 р.
    Klippa says:

    Nicely put. Keep bloggin bro’

  2. 13:17, 18 September, 2008 р.
    Trav says:

    Firstly, you’re attacking the strawman. A strawman who takes every single biblical statement literally. Do you really think the entire scriptures were all meant to be taken literally? Do you really believe for example, when Jesus said to “cut off your hand if it causes you to sin”, that he really intended his followers to amputate themselves?

    Secondly, as for this statement:

    “If the Bible flat-out contradicts reality, no amount of context or interpretation will change that.”

    I just read your whole post, yet you fail to provide any solid examples of the bible “flat out contradicting reality”

    Interesting reading for sure. Credit where it’s due. But after reading your three opening posts on this blog, I’m seeing more style than substance. More rhetoric than evidence.

    Who knows, maybe you’ll impress me yet. You’re only three posts in, after all. But I can only judge you on what you’ve already written, and it’s far from impressive.

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